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Friday, March 23, 2012

Elaine from Dashasel sews made this awesome quilt! Look at the paper piecing little girl and fox! Love it! And the creative piecing, I think the modern looking shape is great. Plus I am really into red and blue again, so love the colorway. And the quilting...wow, this is all just great! Elaine is involved in a lot of swaps and fun projects over at her blog, be sure to check her out!

Project Quilting, Challenge 5- A Walk in My Woods

For this week's Project Quilting, the challenge was "It's Where I Live". We were asked to interpret something about where we live. Further the colors of our quilt were based off of our street and city names and state.

In our area many of the buildings were built in the 1930s. With this in mind, I was inspired by the art deco architecture of the time, such as this photo of the Milwaukee Gas Light Building. Coincidentally, the New York Beauty Quilt-along just started and this week Kim of My Go-Go Life headed up the first tutorial (it's a pretty awesome tutorial with lots of tips for those who even have paper piecing backgrounds). So with this in mind, I started making some of these blocks:

My colors were based off my street and city names and state. These ended up being:

A: Aqua

M: Medium Candy Apple Red

W: Wild watermelon

I realize some of these names sound a little wacky, but I got the list from here. As I culled my fabric, I realized that I didn't really have much pink! Thankfully I had a charm pack of A Walk in the Woods, which gave me a little bit of pink. I also had some Kona Cotton Pearl Pink for the background, so I figured I'd work with these.

The Walk in the Woods fabric line influenced my design as I decided that the "where I live" also should represent all the fun twists and turns in life. I wanted to literally have someone walking through the twists and turns. This turned out to be little Red Riding Hood (since there is a red-caped girl in the fabric line). And though she confronts a wolf in her fairy tale, I decided she would meet a Fox (because foxes are reddish [one of my colors!] and there really are foxes in my area). Anyway, here are a few shots of potential layouts:

And of course, this is the one that I ultimately chose: I like that the "walking path" (curves of the NY beauty block) don't always perfectly match and I quilted to make the path feel a bit maze-like at times.

And here is Little Red finding her way...

It's funny because this quilt is not made in my normal, bright-loving color palette, but I really like how it came together. My sewing buddy, J's, love of these colors might have something to do with it :) I also usually make my PQ projects as wall hangings, but this one is going to be quilt meant for baby use. Of course, it will probably last baby girl the first month or so because it is a little on the small side...but since it is backed with Riley Blake's Sugar and Spice, it means she has to have it!

Made in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and measures 30" square. I'm also now completely paper-pieced out!

Love your Walk in the woods quilt!!! I love the "path" and your paper pieced little girl and the colors that you used. It was fun reading why you chose the fabrics and patterns that you used. And I came to your blog to tell you that I love your pea pod pin cushion. I voted for it on the Moda "Sliced" compitition. Great work!!

I love quilts made with these colors but this pattern, WOW!! That is one of the things I love about quilting, the way you can play around with the blocks till something suits you. I love the choice it's just beautiful! As a beginner, I haven't tried paper piecing but hope to one day.